“‘You to be so drunk,’ they said, ‘how did you get home to your bed and nothing heard?’
“‘I don’t know,’ says he. Good sakes, the poor lamb, a gallant strong sailor he was! His mind was a blank, he said. ‘’Tis blank,’ said the judge, ‘if it’s as blank as the head of himself with a gap like that in it, God rest him!’”
“You could have put a pound of cheese in it,” said Denis.
“And Peter Corcoran cried like a loony man, for his courage was gone, like a stream of water. To hang him, the judge said, and to hang him well, was their intention. It was a pity, the judge said, to rob a man because he was foreign, and destroy him for riches and the drink on him. And Peter Corcoran swore he was innocent of this crime. ‘Put a clean shirt to me back,’ says he, ‘for it’s to heaven I’m going.’”
“And,” added Denis, “the peeler at the door said ‘Amen.’”
“That was a week ago,” said Christine, “and in another he’ll be stretched. A handsome sporting sailor boy.”
“What ... what did you say was the name of him?” gasped the Man from Kilsheelan.
“Peter Corcoran, the poor lamb,” said Christine.
“Begod,” he cried out as if he was choking, “’tis me grand cousin from Ameriky!”
True it was, and the grief on him so great that Denis was after giving the two of them a lodge till the execution was over. “Rest here, my dad’s away,” said he, “and he knowing nothing of the murder, or the robbery, or the hanging that’s coming, nothing. Ah, what will we tell him an’ all? ’Tis a black story on this house.”